You’ve fired candidates up with your latest recruitment campaign and have an enticing URL as a landing page for those who respond to it. Everything points to the company being a great place to work. So will they access your site and be further convinced of spending the next five years checking it regularly for new job listings? Or will they struggle to navigate the site, feel let down and frustrated by the online experience and quickly move on?

More than a decade of online recruitment should mean that the answer is always the former, but don’t bank on it. Chris Averill, chief executive officer of CADinteractive, an agency that specialises in useability, says that visiting some recruitment sites is more like going back 10 years in web design terms. He cites inaccessibility, design over functionality and an unnecessary use of Flash (web programme which provides animation) among the downsides and says, in many cases, poor design stems from companies lavishing budget, time and resources on the consumer side of their site to the detriment of the careers site.

“Career sites are such an important touch point for a company,” says Averill. “But companies don’t always treat them with the importance that they should. Those responsible for this area of the site often don’t have the control, knowledge or budget that they should have. Companies need to see careers sites as part of their wider online strategy.”

Stephen O’Donnell, founder and director of UK jobs portal, AlljobsUK.com, which hosts the annual National Online Recruitment Awards, says such criticisms have a familiar ring.

“Many employer sites don’t have a cohesive plan. They often fall down by having different people responsible for the recruitment section of the site, than from the main site. The very best employer’s sites manage to seamlessly integrate recruitment into their corporate website.”

In most cases, he believes, recruitment agencies have the edge on direct recruiter sites but there are areas, as well as specific sites, that agencies can learn from. “They can learn from the slickness of some employer sites,” he says. “The Royal Navy site, for instance, is jaw-dropping and really engages people. Similarly, West Midlands Police site has a cohesive plan and this shows through in its site. Interestingly, three out of five employer sites in our awards this year were from the public sector.”

Sadly, it seems that many careers websites are falling down in basic areas, which could prove fatal for a company and its brand when trying to attract talent. And organisations should not assume that a candidate will give it a second chance after a bad online experience. Those currently in their early 20s have grown up with the internet and have plenty with which to compare their experience.

Recruiters will do well to remember one of useability guru Jakob Nielsen’s laws of the web user experience that “users spend most of their time on other websites”. This means, he says, that users form their expectation of your site on “what’s commonly done on other sites”.

Sometimes, poor design can even exclude certain members of society altogether. Averill claims that an over-reliance on Flash, for instance, could make it difficult for a partially sighted person to read your website. If you don’t offer an HTML version or provide a phone number, you could be accused of preventing them from applying for a job with you, he comments.

Justin Kirby, founder of new media and viral marketing agency DMC, can’t fathom why Flash is needed on a careers site anyway. “That is a classic example of style over content,” he says. “Employers shouldn’t be using trinkets such as piece of animation to differentiate themselves, they should be thinking about their message.”

Nielsen also warns that “aggressive animations” or flashing text can run the risk of being mistaken for an ad. In many ways, Kirby, who has worked in the new media arena since 1990, believes it is missing the point to centre the debate solely around design. Of course accessibility is important and the site must be inclusive and explicit in areas such as corporate social responsibility, he says, but he adds that ultimately it must tell a story about the company and what it is like to work there.

Moreover, to achieve this it should not indulge in corporate-speak to get its message across to potential talent. “People don’t talk in executive summaries, they talk in anecdotes and stories,” he says. “They should be communicating what a great place it is to work in a language people can relate to.”

The use of employees as talking head videos and employee vox pops may be one way of getting these stories across, says Kirby. “Demonstrating real employee advocacy is one of the best ways of showing your company is a great place to work,” he says.

10 simple steps to a successful careers site

1. Test the recruitment site’s useability on your target market and yourself. Don’t merely take the web designer’s word for it. If you find the navigation unwieldy and irritating, so will others.
2. Check the basics, such as making sure the back button does what it should. If the web designer has flouted conventional wisdom about type size and colour or the positioning of web page elements, ask them to justify their actions. 
3. Does it download quickly or will the user lose interest while waiting for rich media such as weighty graphics to appear? The site should respect a potential candidate’s time. Don’t be scared of telling the designer that the site is over-designed for its purpose. 
4.  Is it accessible to everyone? The use of Flash may enhance its appearance but it may make it difficult for the partially sighted to view it. Make sure the site is inclusive. 
5.  Does the site reflect your core brand values and brand design. If you took the logo and name off, for instance, could a user still tell it is your site? 
6. Compare the look and user experience with the consumer side of the site. Is there consistency or a disconnect? Does the home page make the careers area look inferior? 
7. Check out any features such as job searches or quizzes personally to make sure they deliver what they are supposed to. 
8. Is the content sufficiently compelling? Does it tell a believable story about what it is like to work at the company. Allowing employees to speak in their own words can make for a powerful sell. 
9.  Have a strategy in place to update content and keep the site fresh. An obviously out-of-date website reflects poorly on the brand. 
10.  Finally, elicit feedback from candidates and nip any weaknesses in the user experience in the bud rather than let it fester and damage the brand.

The good and the bad: learn from the pluses and minuses of these direct employers’ websites
Reviewed by Chris Averill, chief executive of useability specialist CADinteractive

L’Oreal www.loreal.com
This is a Flash website, which immediately throws up issues: it may be inaccessible to those with poor sight; and users without Flash cannot access the site. Other useability concerns surround the choice of small menu text that requires the cursor to rest on it to light up and the non-standard right-hand menu which makes navigation difficult. In addition, the visual quality of the staff testimonial videos is very low and perhaps not what a visitor to a brand of this stature’s website would expect. 6/20

McDonald’s www.mcdonalds.com
This is another Flash site. The website does provide an HTML option, but without Flash installed the option does not show up. The ticker tape menu in the middle of the page makes clear entry to specific pages harder than it should be. The design requires a lot of scrolling up and down to access the information. In addition, the site is light on facts, and would leave some prospective candidates wanting to know more about what it is actually like to work for McDonald’s. 6/20

Tesco www.tesco.com
Split into two entirely different experiences: the main career site and the graduate website. The main career site employs red text for headings, which I found difficult to read, and an unnecessary right-hand navigation. The graduate website is more sophisticated with a good layout and navigation path. However, there are too many pop-up pages, which should be amalgamated into one site. We cannot see any benefit of having two separate sites, especially when there is such a marked difference in design. For a business of this stature, the whole site should reflect unified brand values. 8/20

Arcadia www.arcadiagroup.co.uk
Arcadia is a dynamic company with some youthful, aspirational brands, yet the homepage does not reflect this. The use of blue text is sterile and difficult to read. There is a lack of integration between the individual brands’ websites, which is made worse when some of the sites won’t let you navigate back to the main Arcadia website. Overall, it presents a disconnected experience. The specific job search is frustrating and laborious, particularly given one of the search functions is by salary and most jobs featured have an undisclosed salary and so do not show up in the search options. 8/20

Barclays www.barclays.com
This website lacks sophistication and the existing design template does not reflect the Barclays brand identity. The pages have a lot of text, which should be broken up by images or highlighted paragraph headings. The use of a light grey as the text colour also makes it difficult to read. There is no link methodology or clear pathway through the site, requiring the visitor to work harder than they need to, to access relevant information. The site could present the large quantity of information in a more user-friendly method and in a more brand reflective design. 10/20

Foxtons www.foxtons.co.uk
Another example of a site where design has won over functionality. This is particularly evident in the main left hand side menu where the choice of colours and background image make the tabs hard to read and the use of a small text further exacerbates the problem. The site lacks substance, offering no real indication of what it’s like to work at Foxtons, or any detailed information on individual careers. Also, the job quiz didn’t work when I tried it and even when a number of different responses were typed in, (including ’no’ to all answers) the same career options were presented in the results. 12/20

Accenture www.accenture.com
The page layouts are simple, making it easy to jump between categories without back-tracking or being pushed back to the homepage. Searching through the site is quite straightforward, with the navigation bar at the top of each page. However, the use of multi fonts and colours make it difficult to search through for specific information. There are unnecessary duplications in the menu options, giving users three different places on the homepage to search for a job, which clutters the page. 15/20

Diageo www.diageo.com
This is a good example of a site that is getting it right. Text on the homepage is broken up with clear titles, and the omnipresent left hand navigation ensures the visitor does not have to keep having back to the homepage. A lot of the pages are copy heavy, which could be improved with well-chosen images and clever paragraph titling. In addition, there is a lack of timely information directing you through the site. 16/20

GlaxoSmithKline www.gsk.com
The design is consistent through the career section, with a left hand side menu bar which expands for each section. The main body of each page is cleanly laid out with the relevant options. The use of orange to highlight tabs is effective and the images, while small, help to break up the copy and make navigation easier. The layout of each page makes it easy to source information; however the general font size is quite small. The uniform design and choice of colours and fonts makes the whole process efficient and it is a content-rich site, with testimonials and in-depth information on various careers. 16/20

PricewaterhouseCoopers www.pwc.com
The UK career site is fresh and easy to navigate, with a good use of colour highlighting navigation tabs and imagery as links through to other sub-pages. This is a comprehensive career website that tackles recruitment for a huge corporation in bite-sized chunks; text is broken up with images and clever paragraph headings, which makes it easy to search for the information required. However, there is evidence of design winning over functionality, with large graphic images and animated graphics causing the pages to take a long time to download, delaying navigation around the site. 17/20